Description: Initiated by the Financial Reporting Section, this paper explores rising interest rates. Following this path, the paper will look at implications of interest rate changes for the life insurance industry, current stress testing practices, and how a risk manager can proactively prepare for an uncertain future. A paper published in 2014 focused on why rates could stay low, and some aspects of this paper are similar (e.g., description of insurance products). This paper also uses a sample model office to help practitioners look at their own exposures. It includes typical interest-sensitive insurance products and how they might perform across various scenarios, as well as a survey to establish current practices for how insurers are testing interest rate risk currently.

Description: This report presents the results of the most recent study of individual life insurance lapse experience in the United States conducted jointly by LIMRA International and the Society of Actuaries (SOA).

Description: A set of mortality improvement factors for year-end 2016 to be used in conjunction with the 2008 VBT or the 2015 VBT for AG-38 purposes.

Description: This is the mortality tables that appear in the 2000-2004 Preneed Insurance Mortality Study report. Please see the SOA website for the complete report.

Description: A paper outlining key considerations & issues that may be met when implementing VM-20, like product development resources, pricing models or product features.

Description: This report examines options for analyzing periodic changes in VM-20 reserve amounts.

Description: This research report on the effect of deflation or high inflation has six sections: 1. The first section provides background on inflation, describes some problems in measuring inflation, and explains some of its effects on an economy. 2. The second section reviews historical inflation rates. 3. The third section examines the effect of inflation or deflation on the property-liability and life insurance industries. 4. The fourth section proposes risk mitigation strategies for insurers to cope with either deflation or high inflation rates. 5. The fifth section describes a publicly available model that can be used to develop inflation/deflation projections under a regime switching format that can readily be adjusted to reflect current financial uncertainty. 6. The sixth section provides conclusions.

Description: Feature article discussing how to do a model update.

Description: Congress has acted in recent years to remove outdated provisions governing the federal income taxation of life insurance companies from the Internal Revenue Code. In particular, section 809 and section 815 were repealed and suspended, respectively, in 2004. This article chronicles the demise of these provisions and explains why Congress was right in removing them from the Code.

Description: This article is a discussion about the life settlement industry and the tax considerations for life insurance bought and sold in the secondary market.